Please note: this thread was created by splitting off from another thread; to keep both on topic. The OP raises a perfectly valid concern, that has been discussed on this forum in the past -- but that has never stopped us from rehashing all sorts of topics before!

Just to keep this focused; here is the topic as I understand it:

Is running Folding@Home worthwhile? Are the possible future benefits and current knowledge gained by this Stanford University distributed computing project, worth the additional electrical energy consumed by the participant's computer(s) worthwhile? What are the downsides to doing this?

Keep it civil, and keep it on topic. I will weed through the posts and edit them as needed to keep them so.

NeilBlanchard wrote:

I've made it! I have 402,705 points!! Woohoo!!!

There are five of us, for the time being:

mas92264herosformulachtudorFastmanNeilBlanchard

In a month or two, herosformula will be moving into the Half A Million Points Club! In nine or ten months (or so) ALL of us will have past 500,000 points!!

Go team!

How can you congratulate yourself on being in a club that does significant harm to the environment (without any proven benefit in return)? Every real scientist I have asked about this says that Folding is a joke and of no scientific benefit.

I should have known that Frenchie and aristide1 would be involved in this also.

:twisted: Yeah, we're the trouble makers around here, haven't you noticed ???? gniark gniark gniark !!!And if my electricity comes from wind turbines, how do I hurt the environment ?

PS : maybe we should move this comment to a new thread : "Do folders hurt the environment ?" or even better (worse ?) "Are folders liberal creatures of democracy ?"

I realize that I speak an inconvenient truth, but it is truth nonetheless. And no, you electricity does not come from wind turbines (unless you are talking about a couple of percent at most). Anyway, the marginal (incremental) electricity comes from fossil fuels and creates green house gases.

Of course, in France more than 75% of their electricity comes from nuclear power plants, something that environmentalists in the US will not let us pursue.

Thank you m0002 for your well conceived and fully formed opinion. Apparently there is no Alzheimers in your family so you can afford to make such a statement. Yes it's true, ignorance is bliss.

But that doesn't mean you won't be financially impacted by the aging of society. You must be rich as well as healthy, how wonderful for you.

If you feel the need to address harm to the environment I suggest you gather yourself down to the local pier or docks where millionaires with their speedboats go through hundreds of liters of gasoline in an afternoon just so that they may get lucky that evening, or perhaps just to rub a rival's nose in it. But since you are rich perhaps you can't bring yourself to address such waste? Is that the reason you haven't address this pure waste with absolutely no upside whatsoever? By the way these boats have no pollution control devices, so one engine pollutes far more than say a dozen cars.

You do remind me of the pro-lifers in this country who sit idly by while letting China's government force abortion rules on their citizens. (yes not always but still). The most glaring aspect of the opinions of these people? Their hypocrisy.

As for the argument that folding doesn't produce any substantial results, well I'm sure if we go back enough years the same statement could have been made and argued over the health aspects of moldy bread. Perhaps one of your recent ancestors did just that. I'm not talking about your really old ancestors, the ones that insisted the world was flat and the center of the universe.

But thanks again for putting your best foot forward and upward. There's no way I could have inserted it into your mouth better than you have.

Enjoy your day.

_________________People who put money and political ideology ahead of truth and ethics are neither﻿ patriots nor human beings.

Thank you m0002 for your well conceived and fully formed opinion. Apparently there is no Alzheimers in your family so you can afford to make such a statement. Yes it's true, ignorance is bliss.

I did not reach my conclusion in a vacuum (like you seem to have). I know a couple of real (working) research scientists (bio-chemists with PhD's) and asked their opinion. They told me Folding was a farce.

Given that Folding is creating untold amounts of green house gases, using up energy supplies that could be put to better uses, and forcing us to drill for oil in places where environmental damage may occur, I would ask that you reconsider your opinion, no matter how well intentioned it may be.

I did not reach my conclusion in a vacuum (like you seem to have). I know a couple of real (working) research scientists (bio-chemists with PhD's) and asked their opinion. They told me Folding was a farce.

If they had to have results as quickly as what they expect of folding would they actually do any better? Are they intimidated by the idea of being outsourced? Have they actually contributed anything more than just another paper for the annual conference? Please provide some results, we'd like to learn more.

Quote:

Given that Folding is creating untold amounts of green house gases, using up energy supplies that could be put to better uses, and forcing us to drill for oil in places where environmental damage may occur, I would ask that you reconsider your opinion, no matter how well intentioned it may be.

This would be your way of dismissing all those speedboats and other forms of waste, with bad intentions. Explain why, can you do that or is your teflon the best you have to offer? Also in the winter I close the doors to my small pc room and it allows to me lower the thermostat in the apartment to a lower than comfortable level while the pc room remains tolerable. There I do such horrible things to the environment as email, watch YouTube videos (which allows the stereo to remain off) and some TV as well. I decided at first not to add this to your all inclusive argument, mostly for personal amusement.

Oh one other thing. If in fact folding leads to a clue and later a cure will you be willing to dismiss the results, especially if you need them? Or will you be 2 faced about the issue?

And please supply us with statistics of how researchers who never find anything contribute to greenhouse emissions. I'll be holding my breath waiting for those facts to arrive. OK not really.

_________________People who put money and political ideology ahead of truth and ethics are neither﻿ patriots nor human beings.

Hey now, personal attacks aren't exactly increasing your credibility here. Aristide has a good point, saying that folding is worthless because some guys told you it was isn't much in the way of evidence. Generally, oil isn't used for electricity generation in most of the US, so it's hard to argue that stopping folding will stop offshore oil drilling. For instance, here in California our biggest fossil fuel electricity generator is natural gas. If more cars become electric or plug-in hybrids, then the electricity usage may start affecting oil use, but at this point electric cars are hard to find on the roads. You're also making the assumption that people who are folding wouldn't be doing something else equally as power wasting with their computers if they weren't folding. All in all, it's kind of weak argument, m0002a.

If you want to debate the merits of basic research of proteins and how they affect numerous important diseases vs the electricity use and its contribution to Global Climate Change, then fine -- I'll split your comments out into another thread.

But it you make it personal, then the thread will be locked. How do you want to go?

Let's all meet, have a real fist fight, realize it's a stupid idea once we're bleeding all over the place and our ideas haven't changed, find the local pub and have a few pints to talk everything over, and have a good time. Then we can stop being off topic

(if folding is such a bad thing - waiting for evidence - I wonder what our friend _____ thinks about waisting so much electricity to post a useless comment on this forum off topic !!)

Hey now, personal attacks aren't exactly increasing your credibility here. Aristide has a good point, saying that folding is worthless because some guys told you it was isn't much in the way of evidence. Generally, oil isn't used for electricity generation in most of the US, so it's hard to argue that stopping folding will stop offshore oil drilling. For instance, here in California our biggest fossil fuel electricity generator is natural gas. If more cars become electric or plug-in hybrids, then the electricity usage may start affecting oil use, but at this point electric cars are hard to find on the roads. You're also making the assumption that people who are folding wouldn't be doing something else equally as power wasting with their computers if they weren't folding. All in all, it's kind of weak argument, m0002a.

There is a big difference in power consumption between a computer running at idle most of the time (or even doing web surfing) than one running folding all day.

Natural Gas is an energy resource just like other fossil fuels, and it comes from drilling oil and gas wells (many oil wells produce both oil and gas). Natural gas production can be curtailed for future consumption if not needed now.

Aside from the natural resource issue, there is the issue of burning natural gas and producing green house gases, climate change, etc. Personally I don't normally go on a crusade about this issue, but certainly Neil, Frenchie, and others have done so in other threads.

Let's all meet, have a real fist fight, realize it's a stupid idea once we're bleeding all over the place and our ideas haven't changed, find the local pub and have a few pints to talk everything over, and have a good time. Then we can stop being off topic :)

(if folding is such a bad thing - waiting for evidence - I wonder what our friend _____ thinks about waisting so much electricity to post a useless comment on this forum off topic !!)

I don't need to provide evidence that folding@home uses a lot energy and produces extra green house gases. That is a given. Now if you want to say that your one computer doesn't make any difference in the world, then others can say that their one V8 SUV doesn't make any difference either. It's all about personal responsibility.

I am not a scientist, but I asked two respected scientists (bio-chemists) about folding and both expressed extreme pessimism about the usefulness of having the public participate in such a project. They both said that there is plenty of computing power available for researchers who need it without having the public involved. Maybe this was different when the folding project started, but it is apparently true now.

The problem is that there are too many egos, too many jobs, and too much grant money at stake for those who are involved to admit that it is no longer a valuable exercise, especially in light of the amount of extra energy it uses.

I am not a scientist, but I asked two respected scientists (bio-chemists) about folding and both expressed extreme pessimism about the usefulness of having the public participate in such a project. They both said that there is plenty of computing power available for researchers who need it without having the public involved.

[I added the bolding to the quote]If you have the resources and connections !!! Research is a very hard field to be in : it's all about who you know and how much cash they have, not really about how smart you are. That's why they want to keep the public out of it. The problem when your doing research is not to look for something, it is to find something.As far as computing power is concerned, noboby in the world has access to as much computing power as folding does. For example, Roadrunner (US Nuclear Security Administration's computer, one of the fastest machines on Earth), has on only 1.7 Petaflop of computing power (http://www.lanl.gov/roadrunner/). Folding has almost 3 Petaflops !! (link to folding stats :http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats). Now, ask your two scientists what kind of computing power they have access to we'll have a good laugh !

m0002a wrote:

The problem is that there are too many egos, too many jobs, and too much grant money at stake for those who are involved to admit that it is no longer a valuable exercise, especially in light of the amount of extra energy it uses.

If you want to debate the merits of basic research of proteins and how they affect numerous important diseases vs the electricity use and its contribution to Global Climate Change, then fine -- I'll split your comments out into another thread.

But it you make it personal, then the thread will be locked. How do you want to go?

I looked at the links you provided and read the abstracts of all 73 research papers published on folding. Here are some observations that should raise some red flags.

1. Every one of the 73 papers is co-authored by the founder of folding@home, V. S. Pande, who is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at Stanford. Not sure why he is not a full professor yet, since folding@home has been going on since about 2000.

2. Most of the research papers (if you read them carefully) have to do with the theoretical or practical process of folding (or folding@home) itself or computer science, and not on the subject of biochemistry that happened to use the data from folding@home.

3. The vast majority of the authors are from Stanford. Only a couple of co-authors from other universities (and always at least one Stanford author was involved). I did not see any authors from a bio-tech company.

4. Many of the authors were computer scientists, a few chemists (mainly V. S. Pande himself) or a few physicists, but I did not see any bio-chemists. Not a single frigging bio-chemist. Hmmm.

My suspicion that folding@home is an interesting application of distributed and parallel computing, but has little relevance to bio-chemistry research by scientists who actually work in the field (as opposed to those who just theorize how to conduct research using parallel and distributed computing), has been confirmed by reading the links you provided.

Last edited by m0002a on Thu Jul 22, 2010 8:08 am, edited 1 time in total.

As far as computing power is concerned, noboby in the world has access to as much computing power as folding does. For example, Roadrunner (US Nuclear Security Administration's computer, one of the fastest machines on Earth), has on only 1.7 Petaflop of computing power (http://www.lanl.gov/roadrunner/). Folding has almost 3 Petaflops !! (link to folding stats :http://fah-web.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/main.py?qtype=osstats). Now, ask your two scientists what kind of computing power they have access to we'll have a good laugh !

The conclusion I would draw from that is that most bio-chemists don't think computer simulations are the key to solving biochemistry problems. Biochemists are the primary researchers who solve medical problems and who work for bio-tech or pharmaceutical companies.

As I mentioned above, not a single bio-chemist (not even one from Stanford) was an author of those papers referenced on the folding@home website, and not a single scientist from a bio-tech or pharmaceutical company was involved in those papers.

The conclusion I would draw from that is that most bio-chemists don't think computer simulations are the key to solving biochemistry problems.

That makes their opinions on the folding project irrelevant then doesn't it ? Folding is fundamental research. This is not something biotech companies are interested in. They want quick returns on investment. No biotech company is going to spends millions of $$$ for years on fundamental research without a garanteed result at the end (which is what fundamental research is). Much of what the biotech companies do, is use existing research to come up with a product they can sell for more $$$ than what it cost them. Their job is to take that research and put it in a pill that will be FDA approved.
examples : the pill (invented by a chemist), Penicillin (a bacterilogist)...
Do you see any bio-chemists in there ? The bio-chemists put those things in a seringe and in a little pill.

I believe that I have addressed all of your "serious" points in other posts, if you would bother to read them.

As to "how researchers who never find anything contribute to greenhouse emissions," then you must be kidding me. I am saying that you and others who do folding@home and use extra electricity (much of which is produced by burning of fossil fuels) contributes to green house gases, not the researchers.

BTW, if you electric utility uses any fossil fuels to produce electricity (in addition to wind, solar, hydroelectric, or nuclear), then the incremental electricity you use for folding@home comes from the burning of fossil fuels.

The fact that you totally fail to address far more substantial fossil fuel abuse shows that you are less interested in your alleged cause and far more likely to simply be obsessed with folding in general.

You remind me of those during the 1974 oil crisis that kept yelling about the fuel use at car races when in reality those that attended baseball and football games (the fans) used far more fuel that the races ever did.

Stop back when you can prioritize your issues, which is another way of saying that you need to address the bigger problems, not just the ones that are convenient for you, like those goofy pro-lifers.

By the way do you watch TV? How's your useless fuel usage going?

_________________People who put money and political ideology ahead of truth and ethics are neither﻿ patriots nor human beings.

I am saying that you and others who do folding@home and use extra electricity (much of which is produced by burning of fossil fuels) contributes to green house gases, not the researchers.

Hey look at that, a valid statement !!

My turn : I am saying that you and others who post off topic in the forum and use extra electricity (much of which is produced by burning of fossil fuels) for no reason contribute to green house gases, not the folders. And no, you can't deny your computer is not on when you're reading this !!

And about your point where you mention the V8 engine : 1 HP is roughtly 750 Watts... So a 300 horse power V8 engine uses 300*750 = 225 000 Watts... Compared to the estimated 200 Watts my computer draws out of the wall. So for every hour your V8 is on, my computer has to stay on folding at full throttle for 1000 hours (about 40 days). It's important to put things into perspective !

[EDIT : And I'm not sure any car out there with a V8 can stay on at full power on a single tank of fuel]

My turn : I am saying that you and others who post off topic in the forum and use extra electricity (much of which is produced by burning of fossil fuels) for no reason contribute to green house gases, not the folders. And no, you can't deny your computer is not on when you're reading this !!

I don't claim to be an expert regarding folding@home, but my impression is that it is using a significant amount of CPU power, which is far more (by many orders of magnitude) than is used by posting on a forum or when idle (or when on standby), and folding@home basically uses all the idle capacity on the machine whenever it is powered on.

When there are contests to see who can amass the most points, I assume most of these people are burning significant CPU (and using significant electricity) 24x7.

Do you have any idea of the ratio of computer gamers to folders? Is it 1000:1? 10,000:1? 100,000 to 1? When articles on video cards and processors are printed folders tend to address the efficiency of the hardware. The replies are usually "who cares?" Gamers certainly don't, they are the ones who overvolt and overclock, pay no attention to whether or not a power supply is APFC or not. In short their often very powerful machines are also quite inefficient, and made more so by their tweaking. Are you addressing this far greater problem?

Folders on the other hand typically want maximum efficiency for what they are doing. Also many people fold in the background only when their PCs are on for other purposes, so that the power draw of folding is actually only a small portion of the power being used. To a degree you should be thankful for any hard core enthusiast, because they tend to buy new expensive stuff, which later becomes mainstream and lowers you cost to buy. (Intel and 32nm, are you paying any attention?)

I realize you will dismiss this the same as all information that simply doesn't suit you, but there it is. And thanks for hijacking a thread for your personal grievance.

I have to run out now and buy a mess of cheese, to accompany all that whine.

Quote:

The problem when your doing research is not to look for something, it is to find something.

The very reason I shun researchers.

By the way over the last 4 years of college courses I had only one instructor who was so incompetent that I complained about them all semester, asked for a refund of my tuition, and got it. The refund was after the end of the class when all student evaluations were done. Why am I telling you this? Because of all the instructors I had over the years this was the only one that had a PhD.

_________________People who put money and political ideology ahead of truth and ethics are neither﻿ patriots nor human beings.

Last edited by aristide1 on Thu Jul 22, 2010 1:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

If you want to pick a fight, then you should read before you post. You know those "scientists" at Stanford University are so frivolous

I may be crazy to say this, but I'm guessing maybe 1 or 2 people at Stanford have a PhD?

Two seems to the magic cutoff point to prove one's point, so let's go with that number.

Stanford is a very prestigious University. I notice that the guy who invented folding@home is still an Associate Professor (not a Full Professor), which means "maybe" that some of his colleagues in the chemistry department think he is doing more computer science than chemistry. Not a single bio-chemist from Stanford is listed as a co-author in any of the 73 articles mentioned above about folding@home, nor are there any bio-chemists from anywhere listed as a co-author.

My suspicion that the folding@home is really just a computer science project, and not a meaningful bio-tech research project, has been confirmed by what I have read in this thread.

With regard to whether you are justified in wasting energy by folding@home because other people waste energy by playing computer games (or whatever) does not deserve a response, and I will not give you one other than to repeat what your mommy and daddy told you (two wrongs don't make a right).

Once again m0002a, it's all a matter of perspective. When folding@home is in the top 100 of the most energy hungry devices on Earth, I will gladly give it up. In the meantime, there are more important issues to talk about as far as energy efficency is concerned. And Aristide has made many very valid points about this, for example about yachts or gamers' computers, both very power hungry hobbies that will never accomplish anything (maybe helping the firtst one score, and preventing the second one from scoring but that's hardly an accomplishment !).

The OP feels that running Folding@Home is a fruitless and wasteful use of electricity, which contributes too much to creating GHG and increase Global Climate Change -- more than any results or possible future results could justify.

I say to the OP: fine; you have every right to make that judgment for yourself and nobody is forcing you to run Folding@Home on your computer.

You have no right for calling us foolish for not agreeing with you. And you have no blessed idea about the relative academic and professional merit and ability of anybody involved with creating and running a large, cross-disciplined research project, such as Folding@Home. If you insist on denigrating those of us who disagree with you, then we are all done with this discussion.

I actually appreciate you bringing up this discussion (though I am quite upset with your conduct in doing so). Here's what I think on the subject:

We waste all sorts of energy; especially here in the USA. This is probably the single most important problem that the World faces, today. Global Climate Change is a very real problem (I'm glad that you are concerned about it, too!), and I have made as many personal changes to my overall energy consumption as I can:

Almost all of the light bulbs in my house are either CFL or LED, and we have (relatively) low consumption electrical appliances. I know what my refrigerator consumes in a day: 1.6kWh -- which is pretty damn good, especially considering it is a 27 cu ft unit! We use ceiling fans and NO A/C. Suffice it to say, our household electricity consumption has decreased significantly -- like by almost half in the several years that I have been trying to conserve electricity. This savings alone more than compensates for my running Folding@Home.

But, I have not been just conserving electricity! That alone will not solve the causes of Global Climate Change, as I'm sure that you are aware. I have made fairly extensive modifications to my car, and to my driving style (I call it ecodriving), as to raise my average fuel consumption 40-70% above the EPA Combined rating for my car (a 2005 Scion xA). This has saved ~630 gallons of gasoline in just the past couple of years. Since each gallon of gasoline (just in the gas itself, not counting all the embedded energy to find, extract,transport, refine, etc.) is worth 33.4kWh of electricity; brings the total savings to the equivalent of 21,042kWh -- that is more electricity than our household uses in about 2.5 years!

And that's not all sir/madam! We took advantage of a generous rebate from our energy company, to greatly reduce the cost of heating our house by insulating it, and after the $2K rebate, our out-of-pocket expense was just $740. We reduced our natural gas bill (during the winter months) from ~$350 by over $200 per month. So, as far as the costs go, we already more than recouped our costs, and the energy company will recoup theirs in a few short years. That is about a 60% energy savings; thank you very much! And it alone represents more than an order of magnitude more energy, than is additionally consumed by running Folding@Home.

So, as a cancer survivor, who is related to several Alzheimer's victims, and my concern for many of the other diseases that are included in the Folding@Home project:

The OP feels that running Folding@Home is a fruitless and wasteful use of electricity, which contributes too much to creating GHG and increase Global Climate Change -- more than any results or possible future results could justify.

I say to the OP: fine; you have every right to make that judgment for yourself and nobody is forcing you to run Folding@Home on your computer.

You have no right for calling us foolish for not agreeing with you. And you have no blessed idea about the relative academic and professional merit and ability of anybody involved with creating and running a large, cross-disciplined research project, such as Folding@Home. If you insist on denigrating those of us who disagree with you, then we are all done with this discussion.

I did not reach my conclusion about folding@home in a vacuum. I was curious about it, so I asked two bio-chemists about it (without giving them any input from me) and they were both skeptical, and didn't know anyone in bio-tech research who used the data that comes from folding@home. These were very well established bio-chemists who work for major bio-tech firms and have fairly impressive CV's.

I have not called anyone foolish. I have not denigrated anyone. On the contrary, there has been a systematic denigration of me on this and other threads by the "so-called" moderator and his cohorts.

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